“We stood up for this because different voices — even if they’re sometimes offensive — can make the world a better and more interesting place,” he wrote. “[W]e never let one country or group of people dictate what people can share across the world. …This is what we all need to reject — a group of extremists trying to silence the voices and opinions of everyone else around the world. I won’t let that happen on Facebook. I’m committed to building a service where you can speak freely without fear of violence.”

Zuckerberg’s brief post has been liked by more than 435,000 people and shared by more than 45,000. The applause is loud and clear.

But did Zuckerberg forget something? About two weeks ago, Facebook censored a video I posted about a self-immolating Tibetan in China, and around the same time the Facebook account of exiled Chinese writer Liao Yiwu was suspended for posting photos of a Chinese artist streaking in Stockholm to protest China’s imprisonment of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. Thanks to media reports of these two incidents of Facebook censorship, Zuckerberg can’t really paint himself as a hero who would die to defend freedom of expression. [Source]

“Freedom of expression includes criticism, disagreement or even rejection of faiths or ideology … but should not and must not allow ‘insult’,” Abbasi had written. “Would it be ‘freedom of expression’ if I brand black people as niggers or if I say Hitler was a messiah? Would I not be branded a racist or anti-semitic?”

[…] Zuckerberg’s strong response to the Hebdo attack has thrown Facebook’s attitude to free speech into the public eye again. The social network is among the least permissive online, and is famous for removing content, including pictures of breastfeeding mothers, that it decides is in violation of its community standards.

[… Pando Daily’s Nathaniel Mott commented] “It would be one thing for Zuckerberg to express support for those most affected by the Charlie Hebdo killings. No one should be killed for their beliefs. But it’s another thing entirely to use this tragedy to white-wash Facebook’s murky relationship with numerous governments and pretend it’s not the least free social service available.” [Source]

When a state – say, Russia — asks Facebook to block the Internet, the company faces a “tricky calculus,” he said. What’s the benefit of denying a censorship request? Zuckerberg said he “can’t think of any examples” where a company like Facebook has taken a stand on free speech and gotten a country to change its laws as a result.

Getting blocked would only take Facebook away for everybody else. What good would that do? “Our responsibility” is to keep Facebook operational at all costs, he said.

Zuckerberg said Facebook doesn’t do this for business reasons. “If we got blocked in a few more countries, that probably wouldn’t affect our business a lot,” he said. “This is really about our mission and our philosophy.” [Source]

Liao Yiwu, who lives in Berlin, said Wednesday that he received notifications from Facebook that the company had temporarily blocked his ability to post updates to his page. Previous content on Mr. Liao’s page remained viewable.

The move came after he posted photos of an artist friend staging a nude protest.

“Facebook has a pretty simple policy with regard to nudity: we prohibit it. The individual in question repeatedly posted pictures containing nudity,” a spokeswoman said, pointing to the company’s policies.

The spokeswoman continued: “Any suggestion that we took action because of politics, philosophy or theoretical business interests is complete nonsense.”

Mr. Liao said he maintained that the images depicted a form of performance art and shouldn’t be regarded the same way that pornography might be.

“They don’t even provide an opportunity for me to defend myself or to debate the issue,” he said. “This is the equivalent of speech dictatorship. It’s infuriating.” […] [Source]

Liao Yiwu, whose works include The Corpse Walker and Interviews with People from the Bottom Rung of Society, had posted images of artist Meng Huang streaking at an annual demonstration in support of the jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, but had covered Meng’s groin with an image of Mao Zedong to avoid breaching Facebook’s community rules. Ironically, such an image would be considered even more offensive to Chinese authorities, who strictly control the use of Mao’s image.

[…] “Any suggestion that we took action because of politics, philosophy or theoretical business interests is complete nonsense,” the company [Facebook] said.

A more likely explanation is that China’s legions of pro-government wumaoding – or 50-cent army – are exploiting Facebook’s complaints system to target users who post critical or controversial content about China. Both Mr Woeser and Mr Liao said they had had no difficulties with the site until this week. [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2015/01/facebook-suspends-exiled-writer-liao-yiwus-account/feed/0Woeser Accuses Facebook of Censoring Postshttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/12/woeser-accuses-facebook-censoring-immolation-photos/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/12/woeser-accuses-facebook-censoring-immolation-photos/#commentsMon, 29 Dec 2014 03:53:19 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=180166Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser has accused Facebook of censoring a post which included images of the recent self-immolation of Kalsang Yeshi, a 37-year-old monk who set himself on fire in Dawu County, Sichuan on December 23. After posting about his death, Woeser received a message from Facebook that the content violated the company’s “community guidelines” and would not be posted.

Tsering Woeser, who has written several books about Tibet and is a critic of Chinese policies in the region, said she posted a short item about Kalsang Yeshi, a 37-year-old monk who set himself on fire in front of a police station on Dec. 23 in Dawu County, part of the Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in northwestern Sichuan.

[…] Ms. Woeser, who is based in Beijing, said she believed the post may have been deleted because of the disturbing nature of the self-immolation, or because of efforts to sanitize material that might be critical of the Chinese authorities. She joined Facebook in 2008 and has posted extensively about self-immolations, but says this was the first time the company had removed her content.

“I was really surprised. I couldn’t believe my eyes,” she said of her reaction to the deletion notice. “I thought, ‘How is it that this has become like a Chinese website?’ ” [Source]

Facebook has long been a place where people turn to share their experiences and raise awareness about issues important to them. Sometimes, those experiences and issues involve graphic content that is of public interest or concern, such as human rights abuses or acts of terrorism. In many instances, when people share this type of content, it is to condemn it. However, graphic images shared for sadistic effect or to celebrate or glorify violence have no place on our site.

When people share any content, we expect that they will share in a responsible manner. That includes choosing carefully the audience for the content. For graphic videos, people should warn their audience about the nature of the content in the video so that their audience can make an informed choice about whether to watch it. [Source]

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was recently accused of pandering to Chinese authorities in an effort to be allowed entry into the China market, where the site has long been blocked. During a visit to California by China’s “Cyberspace Minister” Lu Wei, Zuckerberg was photographed showing him a copy of Xi Jinping’s “The Governance of China,” and saying he had shared the tome with his staff.

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/12/woeser-accuses-facebook-censoring-immolation-photos/feed/0Amy Chang on the Internet with Chinese Characteristicshttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/12/amy-chang-internet-chinese-characteristics/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/12/amy-chang-internet-chinese-characteristics/#commentsWed, 17 Dec 2014 00:12:45 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=179942China is becoming increasingly assertive in controlling its Internet borders. At the World Internet Conference held in Wuzhen, Zhejiang after the APEC summit last month, a manifesto on the central government’s right to “sovereignty over the Internet in China” was slipped under the hotel room doors of attendees. The conference was an opportunity for China to defend the Great Firewall, not break it down.

Digital insularity may be paying off. The Great Firewall creates a vacuum for homegrown Internet companies to fill. Once Twitter, Google, and Facebook were out of the picture, Weibo, Baidu, and Renren filled the space. Domestic web platforms, while not yet household names abroad, are now gaining foreign investment, as evinced by the Alibaba IPO this summer. Facebook is now looking for a way back into China. It has opened a field office in Beijing to help Chinese companies advertise on the site. When cyber czar Lu Wei visited Facebook headquarters earlier this month, CEO Mark Zuckerberg had a copy of Xi Jinping’s The Governance of China on his desk, and explained that he had given copies to colleagues to help them understand “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

China’s list of prohibited content online includes any information that: endangers state security, damages state honor and interests, spreads rumors, and disrupts social order and stability. These draconian regulations are further reinforced by Chinese literature on cybersecurity strategy. Chinese cyber scholars, for example, have noted instances where loss of control over the Internet toppled regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. Nothing frightens the ruling CCP more than the prospect of an uncontrolled Internet having a similar outcome in China.

China has engaged the international community on this front, wishing to signal to other countries that it is a responsible and cooperative actor on technology issues. Understanding that international norms and law have yet to codify Internet governance and cyber activity, China has invested significant effort to set the course for international norms in Internet governance.

China’s push for Internet sovereignty gained momentum abroad after Edward Snowden released information about U.S. National Security Agency surveillance programs. Capitalizing on the anti-U.S. sentiment in other authoritarian countries like Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, China wooed developing countries with growing online populations to consider the benefits of control of the Internet. [Source]

In the executive summary of her report, Chang writes that “China’s foreign policy behavior, including its cyber activity, is driven primarily by the domestic political imperative to protect the longevity of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).” Zuckerberg’s courting of Lu only supports Chinese protectionism, Chang says at SFGate:

Why was Zuckerberg’s gesture toward Lu especially concerning? Because China is actively promoting a counter-narrative to the traditional Western notion of an open, free, networked society. China, and in particular Lu, have been proposing the concept of sovereignty in cyberspace, implying China’s ability to control its own Internet, censor information that may threaten the regime, and administer Web traffic within its own borders. China has employed this language in state-sponsored media, in government white papers, in U.N. meetings, and in literature distributed at Internet governance conferences.

The message conveyed in these efforts is the antithesis of what Silicon Valley stands for. In the past several years, companies have stood up for its principles of free access to information and freedom from censorship and monitoring. In early 2010, Google said it would stop censoring Internet search results in China and subsequently ceased search services in the country.

[…] While Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and connected, the company should have had the foresight to understand how Lu’s visit to Silicon Valley — and Zuckerberg’s gesture in particular — would provide fodder for promoting China’s model of Internet governance. [Source]

China may never export Internet governance to the U.S., but it is increasingly spreading its message—and its digital reach—to other countries. Baidu launched Busca, a Portuguese-language search engine, in Brazil this July. Busca does not block sensitive keywords like “Falun Gong,” but results may be filtered. Naspers, a media and Internet giant with a “near-monopoly on satellite TV” in its home country of South Africa, owns a 34% stake in Tencent, leading to concerns that Chinese censorship practices could affect media consumers in the country.

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/12/amy-chang-internet-chinese-characteristics/feed/0Facebook Chief Welcomes China’s Roaming Cyberczarhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/12/facebook-chief-welcomes-chinas-roaming-cyberczar/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/12/facebook-chief-welcomes-chinas-roaming-cyberczar/#commentsTue, 09 Dec 2014 08:49:56 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=179742In October, China’s “Cyberspace Minister” Lu Wei warned foreign Internet companies that the country is entitled to “choose who can come to our home and be our guest.” “What we cannot permit,” he had previously warned, “is the taking advantage of China’s market, of profiting from Chinese money, but doing damage to China. This will absolutely not be permitted [….] Assuming respect for this bottom line any internet company is welcome in China.”

“I’ve also bought copies of this book for my colleagues,” Mr Zuckerberg told his visitor of the president’s book, according to The Paper, a government-run news website. “I want them to understand socialism with Chinese characteristics”.

[…] “Zuckerberg is an internet genius, the founder of the Facebook empire. Yet his understanding of Chinese politics is like that of a three-year-old not a 30-year-old,” said Mr Hu, a Beijing-based activist who has been repeatedly placed under house arrest for criticising the Communist Party.

“He is like a Red Guard waving the White Book now,” added Mr Hu. “He knows nothing about Xi, nothing about China, even though he is studying Chinese.

[…] Zhang Ming, a political scientist from Beijing’s Renmin University, said the timing of Mr Zuckerberg’s remarks was unfortunate, coming in the midst of a major crackdown on government opponents that has seen academics, activists and human rights lawyers jailed. [Source]

Xi’s 273-page paperback was published last month by Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University and contains fawning analyses of sound bites from his first two years in office.

“President Xi often uses metaphors and story-telling methods to explain profound truths,” gushes the preamble. “President Xi’s language contains great wisdom in its simplicity and has a penetrating power that directly touches people’s hearts.” [Source]

The visit to Facebook was part of a whirlwind tour in the United States for Mr. Lu, a trip that offered the contrast of coasts. In Washington, Mr. Lu faced strong criticism from American officials over Chinese hacking attacks and skepticism about his vision for Internet governance.

[…] During Mr. Lu’s visit in Washington, he met with members of the National Security Council, who criticized continuing hackings against American companies and China’s top-down, government-led approach to managing the Internet, according to a senior American administration official who spoke on the condition that he not be named because the meetings were confidential.

[…] Meeting with United States technology companies provided Mr. Lu with ample photo opportunities to show off back home. It also demonstrated that he could easily find eager partners in Silicon Valley, even as officials in Washington seek to play hardball. [Source]

Despite the best efforts of anti-censorship activists and netizen bloggers to develop tactics to evade onerous limits on free speech online, the Great Firewall has held up overall. […]

[…] However, this control only holds so long as China’s authorities continue to be able to convince Chinese companies—the middleman content providers and web platforms—that it is in their interests to censor and police on behalf of the government. Forcing Baidu or Tencent to police netizens in China may be one thing—but will they do the same in the U.S. when users can easily reject their services and find better alternatives? And their censoring Chinese citizens may even come up for debate if company share prices on global exchanges fall due to users abandoning their services—as Sina Weibo acknowledges may happen in their SEC filing.

[…] Not to get all Free Market Champion here, but I think Chinese Internet companies will decide at some point that pushing back on the government’s demands that they self-censor is in the best, selfish interest of their bottom line. If the CCP is taking the long view, it may be in theirs as well. [Source]

China’s place in the rankings won’t come as a surprise to many people. The notable part is that the report suggests that, when it comes to Internet freedom, the rest of the world is gradually becoming more like China and less like Iceland. The researchers found that Internet freedom declined in thirty-six of the sixty-five countries they studied, continuing a trajectory they have noticed since they began publishing the reports in 2010.

[Madeline] Earp, who wrote the China section, said that authoritarian regimes might even be explicitly looking at China as a model in policing Internet communication. (Last year, she co-authored a report on the topic for the Committee to Protect Journalists.) China isn’t alone in its influence, of course. The report’s authors even said that some countries are using the U.S. National Security Agency’s widespread surveillance, which came to light following disclosures by the whistle-blower Edward Snowden, “as an excuse to augment their own monitoring capabilities.” Often, the surveillance comes with little or no oversight, they said, and is directed at human-rights activists and political opponents. [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/12/facebook-chief-welcomes-chinas-roaming-cyberczar/feed/0China’s Cyberspace Minister Accuses U.S. of Hackinghttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/10/chinas-internet-chief-accuses-u-s-hacking/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/10/chinas-internet-chief-accuses-u-s-hacking/#commentsFri, 31 Oct 2014 01:47:36 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=178681Aside from defending China’s right to block foreign websites, top Internet regulator Lu Wei struck back against hacking accusations at a news conference on Thursday. 80 per cent of government websites in China, he claimed, have come under hacking assaults, many reportedly launched from the US. The Financial Times’ Charles Clover reports:

China’s internet tsar has lashed out at US cyber hacking allegations against his country, saying it was in fact the “world’s largest victim” of the practice.

[…] “There are some who accuse China of hacking, and here I must stress that we do not permit hacking of others’ networks to attain information,” said Mr Lu, adding: “China is the world’s main victim of cyber hacking.” [Source]

Lu Wei, head of the State Internet Information Office, condemned the use of “superior technology to attack or steal secrets”. But he described U.S.-China dialogue on cybersecurity as “unhindered”, less than a week after the talks appeared to have stalled.

Chinese state councillor Yang Jiechi told U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry this month that resuming cybersecurity cooperation between China and the United State would be difficult because of “mistaken U.S. practices”.

Speaking to reporters at a Beijing news conference on Thursday to publicize an Internet conference, Lu said the two countries had “differences but also commonalities”, and he hoped they could find common ground. [Source]

In a report to be issued Tuesday, the researchers said Axiom is going after intelligence benefiting Chinese domestic and international policies — an across-the-waterfront approach that combines commercial cyberespionage, foreign intelligence and counterintelligence with the monitoring of dissidents.

Axiom’s work, the FBI said in an industry alert this month, is more sophisticated than that of Unit 61398, a People’s Liberation Army hacker unit that was highlighted in a report last year. Five of the unit’s members were indicted this year by a U.S. grand jury. The researchers concur with the FBI’s conclusion, noting that, unlike Unit 61398, Axiom is focused on spying on dissidents as well as on industrial espionage and theft of intellectual property.

“Axiom’s activities appear to be supported by a nation state to steal trade secrets and to target dissidents, pro-democracy organizations and governments,” said Peter LaMontagne, chief executive of Novetta Solutions, a Northern Virginia cybersecurity firm that heads the coalition. “These are the most sophisticated cyberespionage tactics we’ve seen out of China.” [Source]

A coalition of technology companies says it has disrupted a hacking campaign linked to Chinese intelligence, demonstrating for the first time a private-sector model that they believe can move faster than investigations by law enforcement agencies.

[…] The take-down largely bypassed traditional law enforcement tools, relying instead on cooperation between companies that are normally fierce competitors. Coalition members — which include Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Cisco Inc. (CSCO) and Symantec Corp. (SYMC) — say they can act faster than governments because they operate global Internet systems and have business relationships with tens of thousands of companies.

“We believe this is a first-of-its-kind effort,” said Peter LaMontagne, chief executive officer of Novetta Solutions LLC, a cybersecurity company based in McLean, Virginia, that is part of the coalition. “The security industry is starting to raise the bar, or hopefully forcing hostile actors to have to spend more of their resources” to continue attacks. [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/10/chinas-internet-chief-accuses-u-s-hacking/feed/0Minitrue: Lu Wei Denies ‘Closing’ Foreign Websiteshttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/10/minitrue-lu-wei-denies-closing-foreign-websites/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/10/minitrue-lu-wei-denies-closing-foreign-websites/#commentsThu, 30 Oct 2014 23:26:30 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=178679The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. The name of the issuing body has been omitted to protect the source.

Disable commentary on the article “Lu Wei on Inability to Log On to Facebook: We Haven’t Closed A Single Foreign Website.” Implement immediately. (October 30, 2014)

Asked by a reporter why sites such as Facebook had been shut down, Mr Lu replied: “I have never used any of these websites so I don’t know if they have been shut down. But as for situations where some sites become inaccessible, I think it is possible.

“We have never shut down any foreign sites. Your website is on your home soil. How can I go over to your home and shut it down?”

Mr Lu however added that while China was “hospitable”, it could also “choose who can come to our home and be our guest”.

“I can’t change who you are but I have the power to choose my friends,” he said. “I wish that all who come to China will be our real friends.” [Source]

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

In an interview with Chinese news portal Sina.com, Mr. Cook said the Cupertino, Calif., gadget maker will also increase investment in China by an unspecified amount. “In the future China will become Apple’s biggest revenue contributor,” he said, according to Sina.com. “It’s just a matter of time.”

[…] Mr. Cook’s trip is being portrayed by some Chinese media outlets as part of the company’s attempt to assuage concerns the Chinese government or public might have about the security of data stored on its phones. In July, state broadcaster China Central Television called a location-tracking function on the iPhone a “national security concern.” Apple has said it doesn’t keep user data.

The official Xinhua News Agency said Mr. Cook and China’s Vice Premier Ma Kai “exchanged views on protection of users’ information” when they met on Wednesday. [Source]

Concerns about factory conditions have also been a longstanding problem for the company in China. Cook tried to sweeten the image of Apple’s supply chain with a visit to a Foxconn production line for the new iPhone 6 in Zhengzhou:

Great to meet talented people like Zhang Fan, who helps make iPhone 6 in Zhengzhou. An early highlight of this trip. pic.twitter.com/ALo5d3SiSZ

[…] Mr. Zuckerberg’s new association with Tsinghua University shows how Facebook is playing the long game in China. The hope appears to be that engagement with China, along with Facebook’s current operations selling advertisements to Chinese companies, will help the company some day open a form of its website in China.

[…] When asked about Facebook’s plans in China, Mr. Zuckerberg took two big gulps from his water bottle to laughter, and then said, “We’re already in China,” to more laughs.

“We help Chinese companies increase foreign customers, they use Facebook ads to find more customers,” he explained, citing how Lenovo uses Facebook to advertise in Indonesia. He added that Facebook had worked with Hangzhou and Qingdao to help those Chinese cities attract visitors via their Facebook pages.

“We want to help other places in the world connect to China,” he said. [Source]

Xiaomi got itself into hot water this summer when it was found be sharing a range of user information with a server in China. A report from security company F-Secure found that the device’s IMEI number, customer’s phone number, phone contacts and text messages received were all shared but — importantly — there was no way for customers to opt out.

As with all things China and privacy-related, the revelation raised concerns that the information could be accessible by the Chinese government.

Xiaomi quickly offered an opt out for users, but moving their data overseas — MIUI services will be housed in Amazon AWS data centers in Oregon, USA, and Singapore — is the best response to any claims of nefarious intentions. [Source]

Another local firm on the move is OnePlus. Reviewers in developed markets have been raving about its clever handsets, which offer top-notch performance and features for around $300—less than half the list price of the latest iPhone. Carl Pei of OnePlus argues that unlike its rivals, his firm was “born a global company”. Since its founding late last year, it has targeted 16 countries—including such challenging markets as America and Britain. “It helps that a lot of people don’t know that we are a Chinese firm,” he confides.

[…] A serious threat to Chinese firms as they head overseas is lawsuits from Apple and Samsung, who themselves have long been entangled in nasty battles over intellectual property (IP). Ben Qiu of Cooley, an American law firm, believes that “Xiaomi is in dangerous waters of potential patent-infringement claims on the international markets.” But he argues that the firm’s clever management team, which includes former Google executives, can navigate these perilous seas because it is well prepared for legal and regulatory battles. [Source]

CloudFlare is joining a long list of companies, from firms that have seen little or no success in China like Yahoo Inc, eBay Inc, Google Inc and Facebook Inc to recent entrants like LinkedIn Corp, for whom China’s pull as the world’s largest internet market by population has been too strong to resist.

CloudFlare is hoping to learn from the lessons of the U.S. tech sector’s fallen soldiers in China. One of these came at the World Economic Forum, where Lu Wei, the director of China’s State Internet Information Office, said Facebook will be unable to access China any time soon, according to state media.

“You have to play a slightly long game if you’re a Western multi-national company in China,” said Mark Spelman, a managing director at Accenture PLC.

“It’s very important to think about which Chinese partners you should be working with, and organisations need to think very carefully about what business model you need in China – it might not be the same as in other countries,” he cautioned. [Source]

“When I’m in China, I often get asked,” Facebook Vice President Vaughan Smith told a conference sponsored by the World Economic Forum in Tianjin, China, yesterday. “They all come to me and say, ‘Hey, when is Facebook going to come to China?’”

Since 2009, Facebook has only been accessible in China through so-called proxy services that sidestep government censors. Without an accessible site, the company is limited to selling marketing services to exporters. Lu Wei, minister of China’s Cyberspace Administration, told state-run media at the forum that Facebook “cannot” win access any time soon.

[…] Other U.S.-based social-network sites, including Google Inc. (GOOG)’s YouTube and that of Twitter Inc. (TWTR), are also blocked. That leaves LinkedIn Corp. (LNKD), which set up a Mandarin-language professional networking site in February, as the biggest U.S. social media company active in China. [Source]

The agency’s aggressive tactics coincide with an increasingly sobering business climate for foreign firms in China. Fears over the ruling Communist Party’s support for domestic firms has prompted some to declare the end of a golden age for foreign business in the world’s second-largest economy.

Xu [Kunlin, the NDRC’s Director General], an outspoken official, denies his investigations are unfair or target foreign companies. His bureau’s actions, however, are “reminiscent of Red Guard tactics,” said a Chinese lawyer who represented a foreign firm in an NDRC probe.

“The lack of due process in these investigations is disturbing. It doesn’t matter if this also is being done with Chinese companies. It doesn’t matter if they bully their own people as well. The use of intimidation violates their own rules and cannot be one of its tools,” said James Zimmerman, a Beijing-based partner at Sheppard Mullin, and a former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/09/china-goldmine-minefield-foreign-tech-firms/feed/0China’s Tough New Internet Rules Explainedhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/09/chinas-tough-new-internet-rules-explained/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/09/chinas-tough-new-internet-rules-explained/#commentsTue, 16 Sep 2014 23:54:42 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=177211In August, China’s State Internet Information Office passed a new set of Internet regulations on the use of instant messaging services, requiring users to authenticate their identities and demanding that service providers obtain qualifications. Hu Yong, a professor at Peking University’s School of Journalism and Communication, takes a detailed look at the new regulations and their implications. Hu argues that the rules impose “economic roadblocks” that will stifle further development of China’s online economy, while limiting the overseas expansion of services like Tencent’s WeChat. From China File:

4. What’s “new” in the new WeChat regulations?

Probably the most important new twist is a stricter control over grassroots media—the kind of unofficial, amateur journalism practiced on WeChat using “public accounts.”

[…] The grassroots media sensation really took off with the advent of mobile web technology, which introduced new ways of producing and disseminating content. It reached its culmination in WeChat, whose public accounts, introduced on August 23, 2012, allowed individuals and organizations to create mass postings of text, pictures, recordings, and later video. This turned WeChat from a private communication tool into a media platform. At the same time, because users could form circles, WeChat had the potential to become a tool for social organization—much more so than Weibo had been.

This prompted the Internet monitors to step up their game, and at least on paper their regulation of WeChat public accounts has been far stricter than their policing of Weibo’s Big V users [its most influential users, who have been verified not to be posting under a pseudonym]. Right now, a Weibo account with several million followers doesn’t need any “qualifications”; but a WeChat public account with a couple thousand subscribers does. Of course, we don’t know whether a similar set of regulations governing Weibo’s Big Vs is waiting in the wings.

All this hammers home how risky the media business is in China, since it’s so vulnerable to the shifting winds of government policy.

[…] When the new regulations are put into practice they will probably be selectively enforced and frequently flouted, because they are so incomplete. The problem with the Chinese government’s Internet regulations is that they are often ambiguous and too broad in scope, which turns ordinary people involved in everyday activities into potential targets for attack. The ambiguous nature of these regulations gives Internet monitors a great deal of latitude when it comes to enforcing the law. Monitoring can be easily taken to extremes, like when the city of Zhaoqing in Guangdong province recently ordered all owners of WeChat public accounts to register in person at the Public Security Bureau. [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/09/chinas-tough-new-internet-rules-explained/feed/0Why China Could Be Huge For Facebookhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/05/china-huge-facebook/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/05/china-huge-facebook/#commentsWed, 14 May 2014 00:38:30 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=172737Despite the fact that Facebook has been banned in mainland China since the government discovered dissident groups using it to facilitate communication in 2009, Bloomberg reported yesterday that the social networking company is searching for a sales office in Beijing:

[…] Opening a China office would mark a significant step for Facebook given the country is one of the last large markets that remains relatively untapped by the company. While Facebook’s social-networking service was banned by the Chinese government in 2009, the company — using an office in Hong Kong, outside of the mainland — has quietly built up a business in the country selling ads to companies that want to reach international users.

[…] “The government is still quite concerned about social instability,” said Shaun Rein, managing director at China Market Research Group in Shanghai. “I don’t think you are going to see any access for Facebook anytime soon.” [Source]

[Facebook’s VP of special project Vaughn] Smith went so far as to say Facebook contributes to China’s economic growth, citing mobile developers and exporters as examples. Among them, Facebook has helped Chinese game studio FunPlus expand its social game Family Farm Seaside to an international audience, and Facebook is the “number one way” for fashion estore exporter Wholesale Dress to reach customers outside China. Smith says Facebook has thousands of developers working on its platform in China. Furthermore, he says Alibaba and Baidu use Facebook’s technology in their data centers. Facebook is one of the biggest builders of data centers globally. The number of customers for Facebook’s advertising and distribution services are growing in China, despite the fact that the companies using them have to use virtual private networks (VPNs) or similar means to circumvent the Great Firewall in order to access Facebook.

The number of customers for Facebook’s advertising and distribution services are growing in China, despite the fact that the companies using them have to use virtual private networks (VPNs) or similar means to circumvent the Great Firewall in order to access Facebook.

This is where Facebook must tread lightly. Although it’s being used for business and not social purposes, Facebook still indirectly encourages Chinese citizens to bypass censorship measures put in place by the government. The company will have to walk a fine line to avoid Beijing’s ire in this regard. […] [Source]

Western tech companies spend millions of dollars a month marketing their games and other apps through Facebook’s so-called mobile app install ads, and Facebook could be eyeing a similar set-up with its office in Beijing. App installs are a hugely profitable business, worth as much as $10 per successful install, and they are the main driver behind Facebook’s impressive mobile ad revenues.

App developers from the mainland don’t even need to venture beyond the confines of greater China to make Facebook an attractive marketing platform. Facebook’s 65% market penetration in Taiwan, for example, is the company’s highest anywhere in the world, narrowly edging out Hong Kong’s 61%.

There is no guarantee, of course, that Chinese firms like Tencent will pick Facebook to boost app installs outside of China—especially since WeChat is a direct competitor to Facebook’s recently purchased WhatsApp. But Facebook execs like Sheryl Sandberg, who went on a meet-and-greet tour of China last year (pictured above with Cai Mingzhao, director of the State Information Office), may think it’s worth putting out a shingle in Beijing to find out. [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/05/china-huge-facebook/feed/0Minitrue: Bus Fire, Father’s Suicide, Facebookhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/05/minitrue-bus-fire-fathers-suicide-facebook/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/05/minitrue-bus-fire-fathers-suicide-facebook/#commentsTue, 13 May 2014 20:43:16 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=172705The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. The name of the issuing body has been omitted to protect the source.

(1) All news portals, social media websites, Weibo, and forums are kindly asked to strengthen verification and cleaning up of discussion about the bus fire in Yibin, Sichuan.

(2) The media must not continue to follow the story of a Guizhou father who committed suicide after having more children than allowed by the law.

CDT collects directives from a variety of sources and checks them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/05/minitrue-bus-fire-fathers-suicide-facebook/feed/0LinkedIn Creating Chinese Language Sitehttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/02/linkedin-creating-chinese-language-site/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/02/linkedin-creating-chinese-language-site/#commentsTue, 25 Feb 2014 04:59:25 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=169504LinkedIn is creating a site dedicated to China, its 22nd local language site, according the New York Times:

“There are 140 million professionals in China — one out of five professionals on a global basis,” [chief executive Jeff] Weiner said. “With an ‘English only’ site we had four million users,” the great majority of whom were expatriates in China.

[…] The objective of the Chinese site, Mr. Weiner said, is to build a talent marketplace that would be attractive both to multinational companies looking to expand their presence in China, and to Chinese companies looking for a stronger foreign presence.

As the site grows, however, it is likely to require a license from the Chinese government, which may limit what LinkedIn publishes there. “While we support free speech, we recognize that to obtain a license in China it may be necessary to limit some things,” he said. [Source]

The announcement allows LinkedIn to further entrench itself in a country where Facebook and Twitter are blocked for refusing to abide by government censorship rules. Bloomberg notes that LinkedIn chief executive Jeff Weiner vowed to protect member data on the site, andoffered a tenuous commitment to the freedom of expression:

“LinkedIn strongly supports freedom of expression and fundamentally disagrees with government censorship,” Weiner said in a LinkedIn post. “At the same time, we also believe that LinkedIn’s absence in China would deny Chinese professionals a means to connect with others on our global platform, thereby limiting the ability of individual Chinese citizens to pursue and realize the economic opportunities, dreams and rights most important to them.” [Source]

“We’re expecting there will be requests to filter content,” he said. “We are strongly in support of freedom of expression and we are opposed to censorship,” he said, but “that’s going to be necessary for us to achieve the kind of scale that we’d like to be able to deliver to our membership.”

Weiner said that in many ways, LinkedIn’s goal in China is “aligned” with the Chinese government’s efforts to “create economic opportunity for a thriving middle class.” [Source]

During a recent visit to Beijing, Weiner said, he met with students, entrepreneurs and corporate employees to learn how they viewed the world of work. He was heartened to hear that students wanted good jobs; entrepreneurs wanted to build their networks, and experienced employees wanted to move up in the world. “It’s what we see all over the world,” Weiner said.

To ramp up its China presence, LinkedIn last month had hired a prominent local executive, Derek Shen,to run its China operations. Shen has worked previously in China for Google, Nuomi and Renren Inc. In a blog post, Shen explained that LinkedIn’s China-based members now can click on a link to switch language preferences to Simplified Chinese. Shen noted that LinkedIn already has integrated popular Chinese services such as Sina and Tencent into its China service, making it easier for members to import their contacts.

LinkedIn may have some catching up to do in China. A recent AdAge article noted that Tianji, a Chinese networking site owned by France’s Viadeo, claims 15 million users. Some of Tianji’s attention-grabbing features — such as a free online personality test — sound jauntier than anything LinkedIn has tried to date. Tianji also ranks members’ clout, a time-tested way of fueling both online bragging and anguished efforts by stragglers to get their careers into high gear. [Source]

It might not have figured in Facebook’s calculations, but its deal to buy WhatsApp may help the social networking giant get access to the Chinese market.

[…] Facebook has previously said it has been examining its entry into the Chinese market. But authorities in the nation control sensitive content on social networking sites, either through deleting user posts, or blocking access to the services.

[…] “Weixin is so well-established in China,” said Mark Natkin, managing director for Marbridge Consulting. “It continues to gain strength as Tencent expands the platform into far beyond mobile instant messaging, but into e-commerce, e-payment, and gaming and a variety of other areas.”

[…] “I think trying to enter and compete in China in the mobile instant messaging market would be very challenging,” he added. In addition, Facebook would have to overcome any regulatory concerns Chinese authorities might have with the product, he said. [Source]

[…] As a user of both WhatsApp and WeChat, I can personally testify that the former is a relative non-player in China, while the latter has become an instant messaging giant in its home market over the last 2 years. I use WhatsApp to communicate with many of my friends outside China, and use WeChat to stay in touch with nearly all of my China-based friends.

[…] In terms of functionality, I do think that WeChat is a bit better than WhatsApp. One of WeChat’s most popular features is a Facebook-like function that lets people share photos and links with their friends, and WeChat also has several GPS-linked features that WhatsApp lacks. In my view, WhatsApp’s biggest potential attraction for Chinese users is the fact that it’s not based in China, and therefore is less likely to raise suspicions that it monitors its users for politically sensitive content.

[…] So the new question becomes: How is the WhatsApp acquisition likely to change Facebook’s China approach? My guess is we won’t see any major moves on the China front this year, as Facebook will be more focused on integrating WhatsApp with its own operations. But we could see some quiet promotions by WhatsApp targeting Chinese users as soon as next year.

If Facebook takes that approach it will need to be careful, since Beijing can easily block access if it feels threatened by the service. I did a quick poll of a few of my friends who follow the space, and all agree that WhatsApp is unlikely to be blocked if it takes a careful approach and remains faithful to its core function of letting individuals communicate on a one-to-one basis. If WhatsApp can do that and steer clear of other politics, it might be able to find a limited but lucrative audience of Chinese white collar workers attracted by the app’s more international image and exposure. [Source]

The world’s most popular messaging apps are mirror images of each other. WhatsApp, purchased by Facebook on Wednesday for $19 billion, prides itself on doing one thing well—offering a messaging service free of ads, games, and gimmicks. Its China-based competitor WeChat, owned by internet giant Tencent, strives to be everything at once: a platform for chatting, shopping, gaming, and even banking. Users can send a Lunar New Year’s “red envelope” of digital cash, buy a soda from a vending machine, book a doctor appointment or hail a taxi.

The comparison extends into politics and geography too: WeChat, like all social media in China, is heavily monitored by the government; WhatsApp, whose Ukrainian co-founder seems to have an anti-totalitarian bent, doesn’t even collect user information beyond a phone number. WeChat, with about 300 million users, is the most used-app for millions of Chinese users in the world’s biggest telecom market (where it’s known as Weixin) and is making inroads in southeast Asia and South Africa. In contrast, WhatsApp, with 450 million users, is strong in Western markets like the US, Europe, and emerging markets like Brazil, Mexico, and India.

[…] In terms of making money from its users, WeChat comes out on top, according to Chao Wang, an analyst with Nomura International in Hong Kong. In contrast to WhatsApp—whose main revenue source is an annual subscription fee of $1 after one free year of use—WeChat makes money by selling games and integrating online payment functions that encourage shopping through the app. ”WhatsApp is kind of lagging,” Wang tells Quartz. “Even if WhatsApp’s user base is bigger, average users spend more time on WeChat.” […] [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/02/whatsapp-purchase-mean-facebook-china/feed/0Ministry of Truth: No Online Political Concessionhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/09/ministry-truth-online-political-concession/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/09/ministry-truth-online-political-concession/#commentsSat, 28 Sep 2013 05:46:00 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=163399The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online.

CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.